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If the primary goal is discovery of new content then I think it works pretty well. I'd prefer the "Rising" and "Hot" columns swapped, but perhaps I'm not the primary audience. I'd also like to see excerpts in the "Rising" column to help make a decision of whether I want to skim or go into detail.

Also, scrolling seems to lag pretty badly when new content is loading. Using Chrome on a 2011 13" MacBook Pro. Tried InfinityJS? http://airbnb.github.com/infinity/

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The scroll lag is, unfortunately, due to loading in the ad units. We're using all the usual tricks (precompiled template builders, batching builds in a document fragment and doing a single append to the DOM), but the ad iframes are just brutal on performance. We aren't using the "usual" social buttons there for similar reasons; a glut of iframes is performance death. Unfortunately, ads pay the bills, so they're less negotiable.

We're working on it, though, and aren't happy to be content with it just yet. My goal is to be able to achieve smooth scrolling on low-end hardware, and while we're admittedly not there yet, we're gunning for it.

Hey, are you calling my MacBook low-end? :p

Hah, no. I just mean that when I'm done with it, it'll ideally feel like butter on a Raspberry Pi. :P

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